The official website of fantasy author Matthew Roys. Home of Thorns of the Shadow and The Sword Summoner books.

Month: July 2015

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a rambling riot of random coincidences that demands that you not only suspend your disbelief but tie it to a flock of drunken chickens and fire it into space. If it was written by any other author then the story would be a complete mess. Luckily this is not the case though. Continue reading →

I have to admit it, I didn’t really enjoy this book. It felt like a slog to read through it and this is the first Pratchett book that I have experienced that. Maybe the Sci-Fi threw me as I’m not a big fan of that genre on the whole, (though Eric Nylund’s Fall of Reach is one of my all time favourite books), but the plot felt hectic to the point where I often had no idea what was happening and there seemed to be a general lack of that famous Pratchett humour. I’d go so far as to say that the only bit that I enjoyed was the plot twist right at the end that I actually did find very good. Continue reading →

The Carpet People was Sir Terry’s first published book. I was interested to note that the copy that I read was rewritten by an adult Pratchett. The original version written by his teenage self is pretty rare so I was left with this hybrid story. It felt very much like it belonged with his Discworld stories but how much of this was his natural style compared with how much was added in for this second version I have no idea. As a young writer myself, I would love to read the original version to see a master’s roots, how his writing grew and changed over the years and what standard he started at. Continue reading →

Destiny was Bungie’s first project after the colossal success of the Halo trilogy. It was released September 2014, a year that will go down in gaming history as pretty disappointing all around, and had been conducting the hype train as frantically as Denzel Washington in Unstoppable. Everything was set for Destiny to be the first truly great game of the Xbox One/PS4 generation. Continue reading →